


Haply I Think On Thee

by prairiecrow



Series: The Curse of the Mendari [4]
Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Droid to Human, First Love, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Temporary Character Death, Threesome - M/M/M, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 19:43:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5598451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In hyperspace there is no time in the conventional sense... except the time one creates for oneself.</p><p>All in all, Anra Virlan reflects, this "now" is among the best he can possibly imagine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haply I Think On Thee

In hyperspace there was no day and no night, no passage of weeks or months or seasons — indeed, no time in the conventional human sense. Only the stead tick of a ship's chronometer or a droid's internal mechanisms marked the passage of seconds inside a starship… 

… and sometimes that orderly procession of temporal units was overreached entirely by the wandering scope of a single human mind. 

Anra Tropas-Diir Virlan, Captain of the Corellian courier _Fancy Free_ and nominal servant to the Empire and simultaneous secret agent of the Rebel Alliance, sat in his large luxurious personal quarters (dimly lit to simulate dusk) and let his usually tightly focussed mind drift free of its current place and time. Clad only in a thick robe of black Morgalian silk, he leaned his tall broad frame back in the comfortable leather chair at his elegantly curved silver-plated desk — he liked his beautiful _objects d'art_ , did Captain Virlan — and rested his elbows on the chair's elaborately carved norfa-wood arms, his hands clasped just below his chin and his forefingers steepled to his lips, watching the streaks of hyperspace flight stream past the window in front of him without really seeing them. In the _Fancy_ 's cockpit KNT-4 was overseeing their progress, so there was nothing there to command his attention… no, not tonight, not with a yearning for his long-lost home aching so soft and deep in his chest that it almost felt as though his heart itself were weeping black. 

He remembered it all: the shadowed evening hills of his homeland dusted with the cruel snows of midwinter, the village below his Family's manor dark and still, the hard white shapes of Imperial stormtroopers moving in ranks through its streets… a last glimpse of his father's face, set with fury and determination… then all of it disappearing beneath him as the transport bearing his mother and her five children swooped upward through the low cloud cover, taking him away from his homeland forever. Later he would see holos of the manor broken and burning, the liveried corpses of his father's soldiers scattered in the ruins… but they'd never found his father's body, and for long years he'd believed, he'd dreamed, that somehow Darva Tropas-Norril Virlan had survived… 

It was a matter of pride to him that he hadn't shed tears since he was that child watching his father set off to die in a pointless battle — not until one dark night a little over three Standard months past, when he'd leaned his hot forehead against a cold corridor wall between his fiercely clenched fists and silently cursed the pangs of grief that told him he'd gotten far too close to a pale blond stranger, a foolish pretty singer who'd developed a bad case of bravery at exactly the wrong time and deliberately ridden a plague-ship down to a fiery death. It had been selfishness as much as compassion that had driven him afterwards to offer Artoo a berth aboard the _Fancy_ — they were both lost without See-Threepio, but perhaps being lost together might have made their separate agonies a little easier to bear… 

… but then Artoo had insisted on haring off back to the Mendari Complex, and what could Anra do but follow him to make sure he didn't get himself killed, in consideration for what See-Three would have wished? 

He certainly hadn't expected to find See-Three there, alive and apparently unharmed… but it was one of the rarest privileges of his life to have borne witness to their reunion, and to a long-unspoken love finally given voice, and lingering gazes, and tears, and laughter… and, in Anra's own bed that very night, a new physical dimension and a fresh depth of unparalleled feeling. 

In this, his present _now_ , his gaze shifted from the window in front of him to the wide warm bed on his left, against the wall across the spacious (for a starship) sleeping chamber. What he saw there made the crying ache in his chest ease — only slightly, but still enough to matter. Artoo's back was to that wall, in a position where he could see the entire room if roused by the slightest hint of danger, and See-Three was cradled against his chest, that golden head with its single long neat braid nestled on Artoo's heavily muscled left shoulder. With the burgundy bedclothes pooled around their waists they were a study in contrasts — Artoo sturdily built and brown as the roof tiles of Alreeho Township, See-Three willowy and pale as mother's milk — but they slept deeply in each other's arms, with Artoo's square-carved chin protectively pillowed on See-Three's sleek cap of hair, and in their entwined bodies Anra could see nothing but profound relaxation and shared peace. 

Good — that was fine indeed. See-Three had died on board that plague-ship, and there were nights when he was haunted by horrific memories of those final minutes, burning up in the atmosphere of Mendar with no hope of rescue. But in this hour, this time-outside-of-time, he appeared perfectly at ease, and for that mercy Anra was sincerely grateful to the genii of his Family, even if the Family itself was scattered and its remnants in hiding. Had that Family retained its power, Anra Virlan might now be Lord over a vast fleet of ships and their Captains… but the Empire's agents had seen too well that the Virlanii never were inclined to be ruled by an Emperor's command, and had smashed their home territory and their Corporation like a metal fist crushing a hill of ants. The scions of Virlanii had fled to all corners of the galaxy; bounty hunters had picked off some, but others had apparently been considered too unlikely as resistance leaders to pose enough of a threat to matter… 

… and, well, Anra was fully conscious of his own skills and strengths, and also passingly aware of his personal weaknesses. He possessed plenty of charisma (more than enough to seduce a wide-eyed golden pretty-pretty and attract the suspicious attention of a crotchety mechanic), but he wasn't made to rally warriors round him and lead them to roaring victory. No, he was a back-door sneaker: the man who knew how to pick locks and coax information out of recalcitrant systems and maybe, on a good day, plant a bomb or two… but flying under the scanners was his true talent, whether on the back streets of a high-tech city or in the pilot chair of the _Fancy_. He could spoil a story telling it and tell a lie good enough to fool most anti-deception algorithms — 

— and above all he kept a bulletproof cloak over the things he treasured, the things that truly mattered, the things he considered _his_. 

Once that list had been much shorter: KNT-4 (that salty old astromech) and the _Fancy_ herself. Once upon a time all he'd had to worry about was his own skin, the ins and outs of his financial accounts, and how best to cheat without being cheated blind himself. But now… he gazed at the bed, and the tightness in his chest eased yet again, and he sighed softly under his breath. Oh, now! Now he was part of a triad, witness and teacher to a love older than all his own merely mortal years. He was the worldly-wise one, having experienced so much more of human living than both of his lovers put together — but still, there were days when he gazed into the radiance that dwelled between them as if into the heart of a nebula, inhuman and exquisitely beautiful… and he was stricken with a depth of awe not unalloyed by a quality of nearly superstitious fear. 

They had, after all, in all probability been granted eternal life by the dark mysterious powers of the Mendari Priests. Were they even creatures of this world now? Had the Mendari Priesthood — so long rumoured to be servants of the Dark Side — twisted them in ways that merely human eyes could not perceive? 

The eyes could be fooled — this much Anra firmly believed. He was much less certain when it came to the human heart: in his experience, instinct might not be heeded, but it was almost always alert and vocal. And for three full months he had lived with these two entities, had laughed with them and argued with them and eaten with them, slept with them, bedded them in varying degrees of roughness and tenderness — and never once, in all that time, had he perceived any hint of evil in either of them. Yes, Artoo could be a stubborn son of a droog with a wicked temper and absolutely zero tact, and See-Three could be vain and petty and so absorbed in his emotions that he couldn't be bothered to think past his own nose, but Anra would have sworn on his life that they were fundamentally _good_ , for all their obvious shortcomings. 

Good — but still learning what it meant to be human. For that reason among many others they had a place here on the _Fancy_ under the watchful eye of Anra Virlan — and would have that place for as long as love lasted… 

… which, if Anra's instincts were any judge, was shaping up to be a very long time indeed. 

The thought made him smile and eased all but the last lingering trace of sorrowful tension binding his heart. His Family was broken and scattered, his birthright stolen from him, his past disreputable and his future uncertain… but this… this was true, as true as gold — or truer, even. 

Rising from his leather chair, he slipped off his ebony silk robe and let it fall unheeded behind him as he approached that warm inviting bed. He settled his right knee on the mattress and, supporting his weight on his left forearm, leaned in to press a soft fervent kiss to See-Three's naked left shoulder while running the fingers of his right hand through Artoo's tangle of brown-black curls. The sound they made under his touch, together, was drowsy and questioning, welcoming and sweet enough to provoke a new clenching of his heart. 

He smiled against See-Three's silken skin and applied a small teasing bite to that slim shoulder. This was _now_ enough for him — the rest of the universe outside this room be damned! 

See-Three murmured peevishly, hugging his bedmate closer while stretching with pliant willingness, and when Artoo opened his narrow brown eyes there was a quirk of a wry smile on his rough mouth for an instant before Anra leaned even closer, pressing See-Three securely between them, to kiss the smirk persuasively away. 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Sonnet 29" by William Shakespeare:
> 
> "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes  
> I all alone beweep my outcast state,  
> And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,  
> And look upon myself, and curse my fate,  
> Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,  
> Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,  
> Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,  
> With what I most enjoy contented least;  
> Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,  
> Haply I think on thee, and then my state,  
> Like to the lark at break of day arising  
> From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;  
>    For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings  
>    That then I scorn to change my state with kings."


End file.
